The Impact of Coding Over 30 Years

Electrical engineering is without a doubt one of the fastest growing disciplines today. Between the constantly changing curricula and rapidly advancing technology, engineers are required to keep themselves up-to-date with the latest tech and tools. Over the past 30 years, we have seen a significant advancement in the tools engineers are using to learn and innovate. Fueled by the growth of digital electronics, computers along with software and programming languages have helped us shift away from the use of logic components. As a result, while designing and fabricating circuits, many people choose the much simpler approach of the microcontroller (MCU).

In the 1980s, students, engineers, and scientists were just beginning to use their computers as tools. This was due largely to the emerging home computer market and the software being developed for those computer systems. Exactly 30 years ago, two great software programs were developed and showed people just how useful a computer can be, and many industries were never the same after.

WordPerfect 2.20 was introduced to the IBM PC as a port from Data General minicomputers in 1982. The program featured a 30,000 word dictionary, newspaper-style columns, and proportional spacing. The product quickly became a favorite among users, surpassing other competitors at the time such as WordStar. It would remain dominant until the very early 1990s when people began updating their computers with Windows. Unfortunately, the company was slow to make the transition from DOS to windows and stiff competition with Microsoft proved to be too much.

The Intel 8008, the first general-purpose 8-bit microcontroller. (Source: Intel)

Also in 1982, AutoCAD software was introduced by Autodesk. AutoCAD has had a tremendous impact on the engineering community. Up until this time everything was hand drawn, most of the time using T-squares, triangles, and compasses. Using CAD software not only made the process quicker and easier to work with, it enables us to share our drawings within seconds to anyone around the world. Today, we can now run 3D model simulations on computers, designing, building, and testing virtually, saving money and even more time. Computers even make our projects more accurate. Creating a 2D or 3D model and sending it to the CNC machine or laser cutter yields engineered parts with more precision than ever before. Arguably, modern CNC began 30 years ago.

Along with software, we have also seen a very strong development of programming languages. During the 1980s there was still a widespread use of machine language and punch cards. However, with the increased complexity of computers and the tasks they were being asked to do, scientists realized higher level languages were needed. Languages such as C, FORTRAN, and BASIC had already been developed by this time and started to influence the birth of new languages.

In 1983 Bjarne Stroustrup released C++. Building on the original C language it was originally dubbed "C with classes." In addition to the added functionality of classes, it also included a strong type checking system, inlining, and default function arguments. The “++” in the name was a reference for a new way to increment variables within the language and also gave some insight on how it would function. Later features would also include templates, exceptions, namespaces, new casts, and a Boolean type. For users' convenience, the language has received many important updates and has also had an influence on the creation of Java.

Deriving much of its language from C and C++, Java was released in 1995 by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems. Built as a general-purpose, class-based, and object-oriented language, Java is now an invisible force behind numerous applications and devices we use every day. Java was released with the intent to allow application developers to run code from one platform to another, without the need to recompile it. Using any computer architecture it can accomplish this by compiling code to bytecode, enabling it to run on any Java Virtual Machine. In addition, with the Internet starting to take off in the 1990s, Java jumped right in, announcing in 1995 that the Netscape Navigator would incorporate Java technology. Using such tech, developers could now create programs within a Web browser and access available Web services. Today, 1.1 billion desktops run Java, 3 billion mobile phones run Java, and there are more than 930 million Java Runtime Environment downloads each year.

I cut my teeth on an Apple II! Learned programming in assembly language on a Z80 processor. And quickly moved to Fortran and C. I have been out of the electronics and computer programming for over 20 years and am just amazed at what the people can now program. Gone are the days of trying to fit code into 2K of memory!

With my youngest starting college, I am once again getting reacclimated with C++ and am amazed at the extension of this programming language. Then I discovered visual C++. WOW! Even an oldtimer can get into the new stuff!

Virtual Reality (VR) headsets are getting ready to explode onto the market and it appears all the heavy tech companies are trying to out-develop one another with better features than their competition. Fledgling start-up Vrvana has joined the fray.

A Tokyo company, Miraisens Inc., has unveiled a device that allows users to move virtual 3D objects around and "feel" them via a vibration sensor. The device has many applications within the gaming, medical, and 3D-printing industries.

While every company might have their own solution for PLM, Aras Innovator 10 intends to make PLM easier for all company sizes through its customization. The program is also not resource intensive, which allows it to be appropriated for any use. Some have even linked it to the Raspberry Pi.

solidThinking updated its Inspire program with a multitude of features to expedite the conception and prototype process. The latest version lets users blend design with engineering and manufacturing constraints to produce the cheapest, most efficient design before production.

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